Matȟó Wanáȟtake, called Kicking Bear

 Via O'glagla Ouf  

  

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Matȟó Wanáȟtake, called Kicking Bear, was born in an Oglala Lakota community near Pine Ridge, South Dakota. (The exact date given is a guess by sources.) He was in charge of his own group of fighters in the War for the Black Hills, also known as the Great Sioux War, fighting with his brother, Flying Hawk, and his first cousin, Crazy Horse. After the war, Kicking Bear put down arms and began non-violent methods to resist efforts by the U.S. government to take their land and herd them into reservations.

 

Kicking Bear became active in the Ghost Dance religious movement of 1890. Along with fellow Lakota Short Bull and the Paiute holy man Wovoka, he brought the movement to the reservations in South Dakota. Kicking Bear staged the first Lakota Ghost Dance and soon developed a reputation as a distinguished holy man.

 

“The Ghost Dance” was a rite involving drums, dancing, and prayer, and made the whites very nervous. They feared the dance was just a precursor to an Indian uprising. The Ghost Dance was the “excuse” for the 1890 massacre by the U.S. Army of mostly old men, women, and children, at Wounded Knee on the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

 

More than 200 men, women, and children of the Lakota were killed and 51 were wounded (4 men and 47 women and children, some of whom died later). As the wounded fled, the soldiers pursued them to finish them off. Many of the women were raped before they were killed, and a number of soldiers hacked off body parts to take as souvenirs. (At least twenty of the soldiers were later awarded the Medal of Honor.)

 

When the carnage was over, surviving Lakota were “allowed” either to join Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, go to prison, or go to Oklahoma where the tribes hated them.

 

Washington sent troops to Standing Rock Reservation where they found and arrested Kicking Bear and other prominent figures. Similarly to the situation at Wounded Knee, Kicking Bear and his fellow captives were offered release provided they join the 1891-92 European Tour of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.

 

Kicking Bear agreed but became enraged over the depiction of Native Americans in the show.

In 1896, Kicking Bear was one of five elected to travel to Washington to air grievances about Native American treatment by the U.S. Government.

 

While in Washington, Kicking Bear agreed to have a life mask made of himself. The mask was to be used as the face of a Sioux warrior to be displayed in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History.

 

Kicking Bear died on May 28, 1904, at the age of 51, it is believed that he is buried in the area of Manderson, South Dakota on the Pine Ridge Reservation.